A note on discount rate policy and the variability of discount window borrowing

The purpose of this note is to evaluate the appropriate discount rate policy rules consistent with minimization of the variability of borrowing at the Federal Reserve discount window. In the context of Goodfriend's (1983) model of the bank borrowing decision, it is demonstrated that either a penalty rate or a subsidy rate policy will produce minimized variability of borrowing, so long as the subsidy rate adjusts point for point to changes in the value of the Federal funds rate. These policy rules are compatible with a policy procedure designed to target borrowed or non-borrowed reserves. If the Fed does not adhere to one of these specific rules, minimization of borrowing variability requires an open market procedure in which the Fed pegs the Federal funds rate.     

战略风险评估7步走

“对大多数公司而言,董事会倾注注意力和时间的重心是理解战略及关联风险并提供指导……以及对高管实施战略和风险管理两方面的业绩进行监管。”由美国全国公司董事协会（NACD）出版的《加强美国上市公司监管的关键议定原则》中如是表示。     

Diffusion of mobile telephony: An empirical study in Taiwan

Mobile telephony penetration is a major indicator of mobile telephony diffusion. Taiwan had a mobile telephony penetration of 108% in 2002, ranking first in the world. This study analyzes this accelerated diffusion in terms of growth model and determinants of the diffusion rate. To eliminate the inherent uncertainty associated with choosing the optimal growth model, this study compares the performance of three conventional models, namely Gompertz, Logistic and Bass, to identify the most appropriate model, and to distinguish the forces driving the diffusion rate. Empirical results indicate that the most appropriate model is the Logistic model. Network externalities, which this study shows to be the same as the imitation effect in the Bass model, explain the superiority of the Logistic model. Moreover, market competition, which markedly reduces service prices, is identified as a primary driver of the diffusion rate of mobile telephony in Taiwan. Economic conditions, technological innovation and number of operators are insignificant factors. Finally, mobile telephony is a substitute for fixed-line telephony in Taiwan.     

Riskiness of Real Estate Development: A Perspective from Urban Economics and Option Value Theory

In this article, we define a new construct for urban economic and investment analysis, which revisits the conventional wisdom that investment in real estate development is riskier than investment in stabilized property assets. This new construct, referred as a “development asset value index” (DAVI), is a value index for newly developed properties (only) in a given geographical property market. It tracks longitudinal changes in the highest and best use (HBU) value of locations, and it reveals developer and landowner behavior taking advantage of the optionality inherent in land ownership. In particular, the DAVI reflects developers' use of flexibility in the exercise of the call option to (re)develop the property to any legal use and density. We empirically estimate a DAVI for commercial property (i.e., central locations) and compare it with a corresponding traditional transaction‐price‐based property asset price index (PAPI) corrected for depreciation. We believe that the difference primarily reflects the realized value of flexibility in land development. We find that the DAVIs display greater value growth and are smoother over time and less cyclical than their corresponding PAPIs for the same locations. This suggests that developers successfully use flexibility, and that development may be riskier than stabilized property investment due primarily only to leverage effects (construction costs). Practical implications are also discussed.     

Effects of collaborative communication on the development of market-relating capabilities and relational performance metrics in industrial markets

Research in marketing suggests that collaborative communication is important for firms to sustain competitive advantage, especially in industrial markets. This study integrates relational and resource-based views to articulate how collaborative communication influences different relational performance metrics. Based on a survey of 167 marketing executives in Taiwan's electronics industry, empirical findings indicate that market-relating capabilities (i.e., market-linking and marketing capabilities) completely mediate the collaborative communication–financial performance relationship, while market-relating capabilities partially mediate the collaborative communication–customer-focused performance relationship. In addition, collaborative communication directly influences customer cooperation performance instead of indirectly affecting it through the development of market-relating capabilities. The results of this study provide new insights into the role of collaborative communication as well as important theoretical and managerial implications.     

Discrete-order admission ATP model with joint effect of margin and order size in a MTO environment

Swarming demands and seasonality periodically induce a stringent capacity problem in the made-to-order (MTO) B2B environment. Desirable order admission is a tactic with minimal application cost for handling this problem. A real-time order admission problem with limited major-customer population and batch-size demand with heterogeneous distributions is modeled as a dynamic and stochastic knapsack problem. The optimality of the Markovian deterministic reward-threshold policy is verified. Optimal policy, basic policy, and the capacity rationing method are compared in the designed experiment. The numerical results suggest great potential for increasing profit using the optimal order admission policy for MTO businesses.     

Government Supply of Land in a Dual Market

A dual land market is one in which the government owns a significant portion of developable land while real estate development is done primarily by the private sector. This article examines Singapore's experience with its system of government land supply in a dual market, focusing on its response to market signals as well as the interaction with the significant private supply of land. The example is relevant to the general problem of government sales of valuable assets. The private supply of developable land behaves in line with expectations. The government response to price signals differs only modestly from that of private landowners.     

流通股股东在股权分置改革中是否获得了财富增值？

本文的主要的日是从事后的角度分析流通股股东的股票财富在股权分置改革前后的变化.股权分置改革方案的提出和表决是流通股股东和非流通股股东之间的一个讨价还价过程,利益分配取决于双方的谈判力量.统计结果显示,从总体上看,流通股股东的财富在股改前后获得了7%的增值.非流通股比例、股改批次、控股股东性质、市净率是影响流通股股东获得财富增值的主要因素.虽然非流通股比例越大,非流通股股东支付的对价股票也越多,但是,流通股股东享受的财富增值却越低.非流通股比例与对价水平之间正的相关性掩盖了非流通股股东少付对价的事实.总的来说,对价方案是在维持流通股股东股改前后的财富不受损的基础上制定的,而不是补偿流通股股东历史上对上市公司的投入.     

The problems of supplying water to third world cities: Bulawayo's water crisis

The current drought in central and southern Africa has focused attention on issues relating to the provision and supply of potable water. In the case of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, there is the very real prospect that water supplies may be exhausted before the onset of the next rainy season. This paper explores the background to this problem and shows how poor planning, financial constraints, and political intransigence have failed to keep pace with a policy aimed at the provision of water to the inhabitants in this expanding urban environment Alternative sources of supply. in particular a pipeline to the Zambezi River, are also investigated.     

Estimating the Effect of Air Quality: Spatial versus Traditional Hedonic Price Models

Empirical studies of hedonic housing prices show that the spatial maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method is preferable to the traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) hedonic method. Current computing capabilities restrict the MLE method to relatively small data sets. This paper circumvents this limitation by coupling the spatial MLE method with block bootstrapping, a form of Monte Carlo simulation that accounts for spatially dependent data. Blocks are created based on monthly and census tract information for resampling. For each month, we obtained 50 resamples of 750 observations from a data set of 15,727 residential properties to compare OLS and MLE empirical results. We find that the spatial MLE method consistently outperforms the traditional OLS method under these simulated conditions and that air quality matters irrespective of the method used.